Pre-War Foreign Policy

-we focused on domestic issues: continuing isolationism as a foreign policy

-extreme anti-war feelings exist

-Good Neighbor policy in Latin America: Roosevelt wants trade to grow

-Neutrality Acts (35,36,37)

forbids arms sales to warring nations

-1937 Roosevelt gives Quarantine speech: warns of US embargoes on any “aggressor” nation…response to war in Asia between Japan and

China

Prelude to War-

-Russia (USSR) Joseph Stalin

seizes control after Lenin dies….brutally suppresses all opposition

Begins rapid industrialization plans (5 Year Plans…NEP (New Economic Policy)

Those opposed are intimidated by the secret police or killed outright

Prelude to War

-ItalyFascism: dictatorship that hates communism …

supports capitalism

Benito Mussolini: overthrew the constitutional monarchy when it was perceived as weak at the Treaty of Versailles and when it failed to stop the recession in Italy in the years after WWI

-Rise of GermanyFailed Weimar Republic: struggled with

the debt from WWI, uprisings and unrest as a result of the Great Depression

Adolph Hitler: rises to power legally as Germany seeks answers to the Depression -

Prelude to War

• Japanese Aggression• Manchuria:

1931…seized for raw materials

• China: invade in 1937 after the so-called Mukden Incident …fake attack on Japanese railway station in Manchuria

• Emperor Hirohito----Hideki Tojo: Tojo in reality is the military dictator

Appeasement-Kellogg-Briand Pact

-Hoover-Stimson Doctrine

refuse to recognize lands taken by force

-German rearmament

-Taking of the Rhineland

-Austria

-Munich Peace Conference

-American Neutrality

Appeasement-Kellogg-Briand Pact: US-led effort to

outlaw wars of aggression

-Hoover-Stimson Doctrine

US will refuse to recognize lands taken by force…response to Japan’s invasion of Manchuria (1931)

-German rearmament: against T-o-Versailles

Hitler re-instates the draft, begins building tanks, planes and subs (U-Boats)…all outlawed

-Taking of the Rhineland: Buffer zone created at the end of WWI reacquired by Hitler in 1936

-Austria: re-unification strictly forbidden by the T-o-V….Hitler was Austrian ….will annex in 1938

-Munich Peace Conference.. height of appeasement … European powers led by GB and France allow Hitler to keep the Sudetenland (western Czech.)

-American Neutrality: 1935,1936,1937 the US passes Acts of Neutrality to avoid entanglements in Europe and Asia (following a policy of isolationism since the end of WWI)

Asia and Europe at War

-Japanese are invading China, 1937

-Germany annexes Austria, 1938

-Germany takes Czechoslovakia, 1938

-Germany-Russia sign non-aggression treaty, 1939

-Germany attacks Poland Sept. 1, 1939

-France, England declare war

Blitzkrieg

-lightning warfare

-heavy use of machinery and aircraft

-quick victory over Poland

-Phony War begins

Maginot Line

Siegfried Line

-Stalin attacks Finland, Hitler attacks Denmark, Norway, then Belgium

-Invasion of France

-Massive Allied evacuation at Dunkirk

-France signs surrender, June 1940

Blitzkrieg

-lightning warfare

-heavy use of machinery and aircraft

-quick victory over Poland

-Phony War begins

Maginot Line

Siegfried Line

-Stalin attacks Finland, Hitler attacks Denmark, Norway, then Belgium

-Invasion of France

-Massive Allied evacuation at Dunkirk

-France signs surrender, June 1940

Battle of Britain

-Germany controls most of Europe

-Luftwaffe begin bombing of Britain

-RAF defends British homeland

-”Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”

Winston Churchill

-Germany never launches invasion of Britain